We need to talk about what just happened in Scream 7.
After literally years of behind-the-scenes drama, directors quitting, cast members getting fired, and the script being totally rewritten, the movie is finally out. I just read through the IGN breakdown of the ending, and honestly? My brain is still trying to process how wild this third act is.
If you haven’t seen it yet and care about spoilers, click away right now. I am about to ruin the entire movie for you.
Wait, is Stu Macher actually alive?
Let’s start with the biggest rumor. The marketing teased Matthew Lillard coming back as Stu from the 1996 original. Sidney (Neve Campbell, who is finally back!) keeps getting FaceTime calls from a scarred, older-looking Stu.
Spoiler alert: It’s a fake-out. We are officially in the “AI is the villain” era of horror. It wasn’t actually Stu hiding out for 30 years; it was just incredibly realistic deepfakes used by the real killers to mess with Sid’s head. I’m honestly a little relieved? Bringing Stu back from being crushed by a 90s CRT television would have been jumping the shark, even for Scream.
So… who is actually under the mask?
There are THREE killers this time, and the reveals range from “Wait, who?” to “Oh, that’s messed up.”
Killer #1: Karl
This guy gets the best exit in the franchise. About a third of the way into the movie, Gale Weathers just absolutely plows him over with her van. They take his mask off and… nobody knows who he is. Turns out he’s just an escaped mental patient the other killers manipulated.
Killer #2: Marco
Remember the orderly at the mental hospital who had like, one scene earlier in the movie? Yeah, that’s him. Apparently, he used to work at Google, which explains how he made the fake Stu AI videos. Why is he doing this? The movie barely explains it. He’s basically just a simp for the main mastermind. Sidney shoots him dead pretty fast.
Killer #3 (The Mastermind): Jessica
This is where it gets crazy. The main killer is Jessica (Anna Camp), Sidney’s seemingly normal neighbor.
Her motive is pure, unadulterated meta-insanity. She was obsessed with Sidney’s survival book, but she felt “betrayed” when Sidney refused to go to New York during the events of Scream VI. (Yes, they literally weaponized Neve Campbell’s real-life pay dispute with the studio and turned it into an actual plot point. Absolute madmen.)
Because Sidney didn’t live up to her “final girl” idol status, Jessica decided to kill her and force Sid’s daughter, Tatum (Isabel May), to take her place. She even murdered her own teenage son because he liked true crime and horror movies too much and she assumed he’d turn out bad. Mother of the year right there.
How does it end?
It ends exactly how you want a Scream movie to end: with Sidney and her daughter repeatedly shooting the killer directly in the face until she’s a bloody pulp. It’s brutal.
Also, for the Core Four fans: Chad and Mindy are back, and somehow, they survived getting sliced up again. They are now working as interns for Gale’s new true-crime show. Sid’s husband, Mark (Joel McHale), also survives the final bloodbath, though he gets pretty banged up.
Oh, and don’t rush out of the theater when the credits roll. There is a “during-credits” scene. It’s not teasing Scream 8, though. It’s just a funny in-universe outtake of Mindy messing up her lines while trying to record a news segment, with Chad mocking her from behind the camera.
My final thoughts: The motive for the main killer is definitely convoluted, and having three killers makes it feel a bit crowded, but seeing Sidney back in action makes up for a lot of it.
What did you guys think? Did you buy the AI Stu fake-out, or were you secretly hoping Matthew Lillard was actually pulling the strings?
